Night – One-shot
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan
"Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future."
- Audrey Hepburn
The Nights before they left for expeditions were always the best; those dark, cool, uncertain Nights with their cricket songs and summer breezes, the rustles of fall leaves and the silence of winter snows. The dark span between dusk and dawn had always held a queer sort of magic – the magic of arbitrary finality. Would they live to experience another Night? Or would their lives be claimed by the many dangers with which they walked hand in hand? It was their job to be dangerous, their job to not know what was coming next, and so it was their obligation to treat each day like it was the last.
The two men who were one in the battlefield and one in the sheets were the veterans of many Nights – ugly, nasty, anxious times they were. That first one had been the worst. Their inexperience overshadowed their strength, their skill, and their youth. They thought themselves grown but were yet to become men and women, truly. They had never known anything outside the confines of the wall; all society was structured and contained. Society was safe. But beyond the wall things were wild and ferocious; deadly animals and deadly man eaters of an even more terrifying sort, fabled and monstrous they were. Stories told at the breasts of wet-nurses and in the laps of mothers, stories of terror and stories of the ever creeping death, but at the end of all the tales stood the Walls, strong and impervious; their long-sung heroes, the saviors of all humankind.
They were leaving the Walls behind.
They were exchanging their contained environment for one unknown to them for generations; some of their great-grandparents were born during or after the construction of the Walls. Some were the first members of their families to look upon the outside world in almost one hundred years. They were expected to survey this forgotten land, explore it, relearn it, and then reclaim it. Failure meant futility, and futility meant all the death and effort was for naught. The pressure plied to the soldiers both from outside and from within was nerve wracking, and the longer the corps waited to take action the worse it became.
The corps was gathered and scattered, each attending to themselves and to their duties in their own ways. The cadets were the easiest to pick out; not only were they fresh-faced and younger than the rest, but they also didn't know how to channel their fear in any way save for faking bravery. Some other members of the corps sharpened blades, counted provisions, organized packs, read books, sat in the commons, watered the horses, or ate in the dining hall.
And some sought comfort, intimate in more ways than one and otherwise counted.
They had gone to one another without even taking conscious action, the two boys about to become grown. The history between them, the events leading up to this moment, had needed a lot of cultivating and an inordinate amount of sidelong glances to reach the present. And without realizing it, they had become ready.
They were walking back to the barracks when they brushed hands. A gentle twinge of the finger, and more to follow; seemingly accidental to the occasional passersby, but something completely different for the pair. The charge between them was electric, paralyzing, something they could not deny, ignore, or withstand. They walked on a bit farther, opposites in some ways and identical in others. Short, tall, lean, sturdy, dark, light; together they were collected, together they were strong, and together they knew what to do and when to do it.
They were alone in the barracks when a big hand found a small back, and soon they were pressed against the wall, getting to know each other even through their apprehension and their fear. Their fingers searched all the places, high and low, their lips working against each other in a hungry, delicate way. Neither was a stranger to sex, but both were a stranger to the other. Hands grasped at skewed jackets and groped at linen pants, familiar to the act of coupling. And then it was just the two of them, lying back on the rough sheets, sans clothes and sans uncertainty.
It took some time, but then they were one, rolling and laughing and sighing as countless others had done before them. There was a little pain, but not so much that the good parts were forgotten. It was strange, a little rough, and shaky when it came to certain parts. By all logical means they should not have formed emotional attachments; by tomorrow evening one or both of them could be dead or dying, crushed underneath a monstrous footfall or devoured by the hellish mouths that haunted the nightmares of every new cadet. It created a personal sort of loneliness, this fear of loss, the kind that can only be remedied by senseless indulgence; and so they were their own medicine. It didn't make sense, but it sure as hell felt right.
"S'il te plait, baises-moi, s'il te plait…s'il te plait…"
In their union they forgot the next day, they forgot their fears and doubts and the tales regaled to them as children. They remembered only each other and the physicality they shared, trading places and sometimes getting so rambunctious discovery was to be feared. And then it was over, and under the sheets they were wrapped in one another. They knew this was how it was going to be; their fellow soldiers had their swords and their horses and their books – in addition to those things, they had one another.
"I love you," Erwin said.
"Obviously," was the reply, the accompanying smirk subtle but there to the ones who knew Levi's face. It was spare but as warm as his expression ever got, and Erwin felt all the more the fortunate to have seen it that night.
"Obviously."
(A/N) Erwin/Levi is like my lifeblood right now, oh my god. Size kink. And Levi telling Erwin what to do in French yes please. Also, little mini-headcanon, they don't kiss much because germs. Okay thank you later bye.
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